Even the best secret agents carry a debt from a past mission. Rachel Singer
must now face up to hers...

Filmed on location in Tel Aviv, the U.K., and Budapest, the espionage thriller The
Debt is directed by Academy Award nominee John Madden (Shakespeare in
Love). The screenplay, by Matthew Vaughn & Jane Goldman and Peter
Straughan, is adapted from the 2007 Israeli film Ha-Hov [The Debt]. At the 2011
Beaune International Thriller Film Festival, The Debt was honored with the
Special Police [Jury] Prize.

The story begins in 1997, as shocking news reaches retired Mossad secret
agents Rachel (played by Academy Award winner Helen Mirren) and Stephan
(two-time Academy Award nominee Tom Wilkinson) about their former colleague
David (Ciaran Hinds of the upcoming Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy). All three have
been venerated for decades by Israel because of the secret mission that they
embarked on for their country back in 1965-1966, when the trio (portrayed,
respectively, by Jessica Chastain [The Tree of Life, The Help], Marton Csokas
[The Lord of the Rings, Dream House], and Sam Worthington [Avatar, Clash of
the Titans]) tracked down Nazi war criminal Dieter Vogel (Jesper Christensen of
Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace), the feared Surgeon of Birkenau, in East
Berlin. While Rachel found herself grappling with romantic feelings during the
mission, the net around Vogel was tightened by using her as bait.

At great risk, and at considerable personal cost, the team's mission was
accomplished -- or was it? The suspense builds in and across two different time
periods, with startling action and surprising revelations that compel Rachel to
take matters into her own hands.

After the Israeli feature film Ha-Hov [The Debt], directed by Assaf Bernstein and
produced by Eitan Evan, opened in 2007, the thriller received four nominations
for Israel's Academy Awards equivalent. Evan credits the film's having been sold
for distribution to countries beyond Israel to "its original story, combined with the
thriller plot about Mossad agents on a mission. Mossad is an institution, one of
the best in the world for espionage and intelligence, and the film had an
authenticity to it with regard to them."

Producer Eduardo Rossoff took note of the film as being ideal for an Englishlanguage
remake, tied to its unique two-tiered storyline revolving around 30-yearold
secrets coming to light, and brought Ha-Hov to the attention of producer Kris
Thykier.

Thykier was instantly intrigued. He recalls, "It was a spectacular story, and
brilliantly acted. I did feel that there was an opportunity for a little more
complexity and scale; I saw the potential of making a smart thriller that would be
relevant to -- and entertaining for -- a world audience."

After viewing the film, Thykier's producing partner Matthew Vaughn agreed. As
Evan spoke with Thykier by phone and then in person to finalize the new project,
Vaughn started work on the script adaptation for the remake with his
screenwriting partner Jane Goldman.

Six months later, the producers presented the script to Oscar-nominated director
John Madden. He found the screenplay to be "offering a visceral narrative in
which both the emotional and moral stakes are very high, coupled with depth in
the characterizations. One's engagement in the material deepens as the story
becomes more complex and begins to exercise more of a grip. I was transfixed.

"I hadn't seen the Israeli film when I read the script. I felt I needed to watch it --
and I'm glad I did, but then I didn't look at it again."

Thykier says, "We were thrilled that John was interested, and we quickly started
preparing the project with him. He is a genuine renaissance man, totally involved
and committed from the start to making the material work as a movie."

Madden began honing the script with screenwriter Peter Straughan. The director
notes, "The level of narrative development in the material is unusual in that the
audience is constantly kept guessing about just what's going on -- and we wanted
to heighten that.

"Assaf Bernstein and Ido Rosenblum's script for the original film had an
underlying foundation and structure that was solid, and Matthew and Jane had
already developed the story in some interesting ways. But as Peter and I began
to work on the story, we found new directions emerging. And the thematic
emphasis of the film started to shift."

Evan agrees, noting that "the new film involves the past much more than the
present, and there is more action. The Debt also delves deeper into the
psychology of the Israeli characters."

Thykier observes, "With the script's intelligence, and depth of character, we now
had what I saw as a return to the 1970s thrillers that I had grown up on, like
Three Days of the Condor and Marathon Man."

With such actor-driven thrillers in mind, Madden knew that the cast "would be
central to The Debt. Inevitably these characters would be close to us, often very
close. We watch them making a choice, see it ripple through a lifetime, and
witness its profound effects."

Nowhere was this more important than with the lead character of Rachel Singer.
The filmmakers needed an actress of a certain age to embody Rachel in 1997.
She would have to be someone capable of conveying the uncertainty that haunts
her, and embracing the physical challenges. With those prerequisites, Thykier
states, "Who else could it be but Helen Mirren? We'd always thought of her for
this role."

Madden had previously directed Mirren in one of her celebrated Prime Suspect
telefilms. He notes, "That was a fantastic experience for me. Helen is an actress
at the top of her game, and she likes to test herself. She is fearless. Helen
responded immediately to the challenge of this material.

"Here's a role which required her to intimate the wounds and the corrosive effect
of events suppressed over 30 years. The tension and pain of a decision made
long ago are evident; she literally bears a scar from what happened back then.
All this has to come across amidst the pace and excitement of a thriller."

Mirren comments, "Aside from wanting to work with John again and the fact that
this was a good thriller story, I was interested in exploring the notion of how every
action you take in life has a result, a consequence, and sooner or later you are
going to have to face up to it."

"Having learned to live with compromise, Rachel is finally realizing that it doesn't
always work. She is not a person who reveals much to anyone, not even to the
daughter who has written a book about her and her colleagues. Rachel has
buried her true emotions and has existed for many years on a superficial level,
not confronting the depth of her real feelings about things. She finds she has to
do that, and much more."

For that "much more," Mirren rose to the occasion, learning the basic moves of
krav maga, the renowned tactical defense skill that is rooted in hand-to-hand
combat. Krav maga is the official self-defense system of the Israeli Defense
Forces.

However, Mirren points out that "at this point in her life, Rachel is retired and
hasn't fought in some years, so I wanted to keep that realistic. While she was
trained in krav maga, that was a long time ago. So when she is called upon to
defend herself again, she's far from a credible fighter."

With their latter-day Rachel set, the filmmakers turned to casting the younger
incarnation. Madden wanted to "not to be enslaved by the necessity to find a
lookalike actress.

"But then we did find the perfect actress, who has an extraordinary physical
affinity with Helen."

Rising star Jessica Chastain was recommended to Madden "by an agent I trust,
someone who didn't even represent her." Chastain had recently filmed The Tree
of Life for director Terrence Malick, who when phoned by Madden offered an
overwhelmingly positive recommendation. "He was happy to talk forever about
her," Madden says.

Chastain remarks, "When I first read the script, I didn't even see it as a thriller. To
me, it was a drama and a love story. It was so good that I felt, 'I have to be in this
movie.'

"I wanted to work with John Madden because he works both in theater and film,
and that's what I like to do as well."

The actress reveals, "I do a lot of research, and I went into my first meeting with
John very prepared. I had found out that Helen Mirren and I are the same height,
so I said, 'Just to throw it out there...'"

Impressing the filmmakers with her grasp of the character, Chastain got the plum
part. "She is magnetic to watch," says Madden. "She elicits an emotional
involvement from the viewer. There's no equivocation in the choices she makes,
and emotionally she is absolutely clear.

"Helen has exactly that same quality. You can see the tiniest change of mood
flutter across her face. That kind of transparency is rare, and it's a gift. The baton
of Rachel passes effortlessly from one actress to the other."

Unable to share the screen, "the two Rachels" instead met to compare notes well
before filming began. Mirren and Chastain read scenes together and worked out
shared characteristics that would resonate within the film.

Chastain remembers, "Helen and I got together in London with [production
dialogue coach] Joan Washington to work on Rachel's voice. We also discussed
gestures Rachel would make."

Mirren adds, "We collaborated with John, and with the costume and hair and
make-up departments as well. Between the two of us, Jessica and I came to a
consensus about who we wanted this one person to be.

"In 1997, she is hidden, polished and reserved. But the younger Rachel is a very
different person..."

Chastain notes, "Helen asked me about what I thought Rachel's family history
might be, and we talked about where perhaps Rachel would end up; it's in the
script, of course, but this way we could see that we were on the same journey."

In 1965-1966, Rachel is the youngest member of the trio of Mossad agents sent
to capture the war criminal Vogel. Thykier notes, "She has no experience as a
field agent up to that point, and that has a significant effect on the way the story
unfolds."

The actress herself lacked experience in one key area; Chastain admits, "I could
not be more different from a Mossad agent. Before The Debt, I had no idea how
to even throw a punch; I had never been in a fight in my life."

Accordingly, she trained with a krav maga expert four times a week for four
months in Los Angeles before coming to London for rehearsal with her fellow
actors. As a result, "she does all of her own fighting and stunts in the film,"
Madden reveals.

Chastain reports, "I packed on a little bit of muscle, and, considering that I am a
pacifist, I really enjoyed filming the fight scenes."

Chastain's on- and off-screen colleagues include Sam Worthington, who portrays
David, the idealistic but conflicted Mossad agent who is drawn to Rachel almost
immediately. Long before his star-making role in the record-breaking Avatar,
Madden had spotted Worthington in the Australian independent feature
Somersault. "Sam has this attractive, masculine, powerful presence but he also
has a vulnerability," comments the director. "I felt that he could capture the
contrasts of David."

Worthington was intrigued by the character's moral conviction and emotional
burdens. "David is a man who lost his entire family in the Holocaust, and is
consistently questioning his own worth," the actor states. "He dedicates himself
to being an effective Mossad agent, as he feels he has the weight of a nation on
him. With this mission, David's idealism becomes at risk and he doesn't know
how to handle that.

"John pitched me the story while visiting me on a movie set, and he completely
sold me on his vision of these three people who confront a monster but are then
haunted for decades. This makes for quite a thriller, but the core of The Debt is
the notion of living with repercussions for decades."

To play Stephan, the driven leader of the unit, the filmmakers cast Marton
Csokas, whom Madden praises as "brilliant. He's got this louche sexuality about
him, and he brings a sense of danger and a neurotic energy to Stephan that
creates a dramatic tension amongst the trio. It's Stephan's choices that drive the
story."

Csokas sees his character as being "a potent force, and fervent about bringing
the Surgeon of Birkenau to justice. During the course of the story, he is tested by
the claustrophobic situation that the agents find themselves in; it's one born of
ambition and passion. For me, Stephan was a juicy role in the exciting context of
a resonant thriller.

"All of the characters in The Debt have their ambiguities; no one is black-andwhite.
They have their weaknesses and their strengths, they know both victory
and failure."

Madden felt that with these two men cast opposite Chastain, the story took on
even more potential. He notes, "The next step was to develop the chemistry
among them. On this film, beyond working on the text and doing some
improvisation, we had to rehearse the unique physical component."

So it was that, like Chastain, Csokas and Worthington underwent training for the
krav maga sequences. The three actors trained together for nearly two weeks.
Csokas offers, "Neither Sam nor myself became experts by any stretch of the
imagination, so we looked after each other -- and had our little codes to make
sure neither of us got hurt."

Fight/stunt coordinator Julian Spencer notes, "Krav maga moves are so fast that
we had to work on slowing them down a little bit for the camera. Otherwise, the
viewer would be left wondering, 'What happened?'

"John Madden would allow me to step in and give my five minutes' worth of notes
to the actors, and then he would bring it all to life with them, incorporating the
blocking."

"That group discipline was a tremendous benefit," says Madden. "They could
hang out, while also getting in shape and up to speed for their fighting scenes
together."

Chastain says, "We worked as a team even when we were not on-set. In the car
going to or from the set, we would be discussing scenes. We'd give each other
ideas, and ask each other questions. Sam and Marton made me a better actor
because they both work so hard. But they also have a great sense of play so,
surprisingly, given the heavy subject matter, we laughed a lot -- off the set."

"They became very close," Thykier says. "All three were full of energy, focus, and
enthusiasm. Whether it was krav maga training or rehearsing dialogue to hone
their accents, their shared work ethic drew them together."

The shared history that binds David and Stephan to Rachel was borne out in the
casting of Ciaran Hinds and Tom Wilkinson, both of whom had worked before
with Helen Mirren. "This is in fact the sixth time that Ciaran has worked with
Helen," comments Madden. "They truly do have a long history together, and in
this particular movie they bring a poignancy to their characters' relationship."

Hinds muses, "I seem to ambush Helen every five years or so. It's enormously
pleasing, and the experience is always compelling -- for me, at any rate!

"I considered it a great honor to be in the company of Helen and Tom, and I'd
heard how wonderful John was to work with, so I was thrilled when he asked me
to play this role. He's a great director."

Mirren comments, "For the scenes that we share in The Debt, it was a great
advantage to have worked with these two actors before."

Approached to play the older Stephan, two-time Academy Award nominee Tom
Wilkinson was drawn to the project by the prospect of reuniting not only with
Mirren, whom he calls "a wonderful person," but also with Madden, for whom he
had starred in the Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love. The actor remarks,
"John's very good with actors, but he also has a strong technical side -- with the
camera and the editing -- and he always works hard on the script.

"With regard to this story, what interested me was, can one be redeemed after
the endless duplicity of being a secret agent? There's an element of a movie I did
a couple of years ago, Michael Clayton, in The Debt, and also of Sidney Lumet's
thrillers. When everything you do is accompanied by spin, all the common
decencies we take for granted in our lives -- all the morals, the ethics -- are
completely eroded away. So Stephan's relationship with Rachel has gone distant
-- but he manipulates her anew, in a game with destiny that could be fatal."

Wilkinson adds, "Marton and I spoke by phone about our character and where
the script takes him, and we agreed that Marton would proceed with how he was
going to play Stephan; since he was filming first, I later took a look at his scenes
and worked further on the character with John. There was a certain continuity I
was careful not to break."

Worthington had also set his take on David. He says, "David is a quiet, controlled
man who starts to explode and then he can't put the lid back on. Actor to actor, I
knew I could trust Ciaran to take it from there -- whether he watched rushes of my
scenes or not."

Hinds says, "I did make sure to see a couple of scenes that Sam had completed.
Of the two men in the equation, David is the more shy, more guarded one and he
feels very uneasy once the mission is over. I concentrated on finding the soul,
the essence of David some thirty years later, with his having been plagued by
self-doubt all that time."

To play "the Surgeon of Birkenau," an almost unimaginable monster who has
killed or maimed thousands, Madden sought a performer who wouldn't ooze "evil
on tap. We wanted an actor with whom the audience would not necessarily be
familiar, about whom they could not make instant judgments. An actor of great
power and subtlety. He also had to be fluent in German and English."

Copenhagen-born Jesper Christensen met all the criteria to play Dieter Vogel.
The actor was coming off of back-to-back turns as James Bond antagonist Mr.
White in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, but Christensen saw The Debt
as "a thinking man's thriller with multiple layers. When I read the script, I wanted
to see what happened next -- and I didn't see what was coming."

Madden in turn was taken straight away by Christensen's "craggy, intriguing face
that is somehow ageless; he can look either 50 or 80, as needed.

"What Jesper also brought to the part was the ability to be not instantly or even
consistently villainous but, rather, exhibit a paradoxical charm and tenderness.
Making Vogel rounded was crucial; this is a man who has made
accommodations for his deeds but over the course of the story runs a gamut of
emotions."

Christensen adds, "The man is so terrible that I didn't have to make the audience
any more disgusted with him than they already are. What I needed to do was to
bring out his dimensions, the humanity that he does possess, and the
rationalizations that he has built around his past."

In their first meeting, Christensen spent hours with Madden reading through the
script and working out a number of scenes, "displaying the kind of fearlessness
and willingness that he went on displaying all the way through the making of the
film," comments the director. "Like Jessica, Jesper did all his own fighting and
stunts, with spectacular results.

"When we were shooting, he endured the safe house scenes -- where he would
stay tethered for hours and hours on end -- with tremendous grace. He would
even do scenes where other actors would have said, 'You don't need me for this
shot.' At one point, I wrenched my own shoulder pulling him up from the floor!"

Christensen confides, "I would rather not do stunts myself, because I don't
recover that quickly any more. But, it's my technique."

Aside from utilizing the physical challenges to advance his character,
Christensen concentrated on how "when the three agents are holed up in the
safe house with Vogel, it becomes impossible for them to dehumanize him any
longer. Before that, he was just a monster to them, someone who has done the
most awful things; suddenly, he's there with them and they are responsible for
feeding and bathing him. So the moral stakes rise; now how they will treat this
man?

"Vogel's nature emerges as he constantly tests them, and cleverly works his way
into the consciences of each member of the trio. As an actor, it was thrilling to
play."

Two weeks of intense rehearsals were held at Ealing Studios; the setting of the
safe house/apartment on a crumbling East Berlin block was built by production
designer Jim Clay (BAFTA Award winner for Children of Men) and his
department as a 360-degree environment, carefully following the script's
specifications to create a genuinely claustrophobic atmosphere for Christensen
to interact with Chastain, Worthington, and Csokas. Minor adjustments were
made with regard to blocking needs as well as for the characters being impacted
by their environment.

Principal photography commenced in chronological order -- with the safe house
scenes filmed over three weeks -- so that the actors could maintain the
momentum from the rehearsals and better play out the festering tension between
captors and captive.

Worthington notes, "It was our good fortune to be shooting in sequence -- a great
luxury to have in making a movie -- and not having to suspend disbelief, given the
tangible nature of the set."

"It wasn't unlike working in the theater," says Csokas. "We would go into the
studio and rehearse on the same sets every day. When the crew got in there with
the lights and the cameras, it became more claustrophobic."

"By the end, I wanted to kick the place down," admits Worthington. "Just like the
character, I didn't want to be there any more."

Chastain reflects, "I was kind of hoping that I wouldn't like Jesper when I first met
him in rehearsals; I even tried not to get to know him that well. But I found him to
be absolutely lovely, and I thought, 'Well, the scenes are going to be impossible
to shoot now, because I really like this guy.'

"But he's such a good actor that as soon as we got onto the safe house set, I just
hated him; hated that he was there, tied to that radiator. I just wanted to get
away. I would leave the set at night exhausted."

Clay reveals, "The safe house set was inspired by a series of Francis Bacon
paintings showing his lover's final desperate moments. I had happened to see
these at the Tate gallery -- just after John Madden had sent me the script. It
struck me that these paintings had a real relevance to Vogel; he is captured and
tied up in a room, facing the moment of his truth and the abyss of mortality. We
tried to create that atmosphere on the set, what with the dark walls and a black
frame around the lone figure of Vogel, and [director of photography] Ben Davis
conveyed that.

"We also tried to layer in a back story for the apartment itself, to give it color on
the walls which suggested that the apartment once had happier days and a
purpose, being occupied by young art students."

"You could have moved into the apartment," marvels Thykier. "You'd look behind
the doors and find what would be there; no detail was left to chance. As soon as
everyone --cast and crew -- saw what Jim and his department were building, the
bar was set."

The verisimilitude of the safe house set was enhanced by Clay's team's use of
actual materials; distressed door and window frames, floors and tiles -- much of
which had been found at demolition sites visited as part of location scouting in
Budapest. Clay notes, "My set decorator, John Bush, and I sought out all those
dressing details, and shipped them back to London.

"We didn't have to paint those elements. They had the natural decay of time,
which lends an element of reality that is virtually impossible for even a skilled
crew to achieve."

The crumbling architecture in and around the set also underscores the corrosive
effects of the lie that pervades The Debt. Worthington notes, "It certainly
informed my performance. It was this little world that our characters are forced
into with Vogel.

"We had to come in prepared. As a director, John shoots fast and trusts the
actors, but he will push you in the right direction towards what he wants."

The production then moved to the previously scouted Budapest, which had been
judged capable of providing the textured background that would ably suggest
East Berlin in the 1960s. Arriving in the city at the end of a particularly harsh
winter, the production was able to take advantage of a cold and dampness that
pervaded exteriors and kept the streets clearer than expected during daylight
hours. The cast and crew's endurance was tested by the long and freezing night
shoots.

Most of the desired locations were grouped around one central area; these
included the safe house exteriors, Vogel's clinic, and a re-created Berlin Wall.
Clay hastens to clarify that the latter "is not the iconic Berlin Wall that everyone
came to know, but instead the block-and-concrete that was rather hastily thrown
up during the period in the 1960s in which this part of the story is set. This was
done in the areas where citizens had tried to escape."

The "ghost station," where the Mossad trio convenes to smuggle Vogel out of
Germany, was played by an actual train station in Istvantelek, just outside
Budapest. The sequence was finalized for the script only after visits to the reallife
location, with the specific geography and parameters carefully written in; the
presence of an on-site bridge in particular allowed the filmmakers to maximize
the locale's potential. "One should do that more often, really, writing the script
around a location," offers Madden. "It worked out so well...

"...although coordinating the arrival of an actual train was a nightmare. But the
scope and scale of the station added so much to the scenes, and not to the
budget."

Six weeks later, cast and crew decamped to Tel Aviv, having been accepted as
one of the few international productions to film in Israel in recent years.
Evanstone Films, the production company of Eitan Evan, is based in Tel Aviv.
Evan notes, "I was able to coordinate production services in Israel, so it was like
wearing two hats."

In recreating the 1990s, the filmmakers' mandate was a sharp visual contrast
between not only the decades but also between East Berlin and Tel Aviv,
underlining the sense of the three characters having left the claustrophobic
darkness of the safe house behind. While shooting on Tel Aviv streets,
cinematographer Davis worked to get as much of the city on-screen as possible.

"For John, there was no question that it was important for the movie to film there,
given its sense of place," says Thykier. "The searing light and heat of Israel
exposes the characters and leaves no place to hide. The notions of darkness and
light were central to the story."

Locations in Israel also included the scenic, Mediterranean-lit Dan Acadia Hotel,
in Herzeliya on the Sea, where the book launch and other sequences were
filmed, and where cast and crew and production offices were headquartered; and
Lod's Ben Gurion International Airport.

Mirren says, "In Tel Aviv, history and modernity co-exist. It's an extraordinary city
in a fascinating country."

Evan reports, "With every kind of geography and climate, a highly developed film
industry, and well-trained crews, Israel is equipped for films of any size."

Proving the producer's point, four lines of a main road in Tel Aviv were closed for
two days so that a crucial in-broad-daylight sequence involving stunt work could
be realistically staged. "This took about six weeks to arrange," says Evan. "But
we got everybody in agreement -- even the neighbors."

The production then returned to Budapest, which this time doubled for the
Ukraine; pivotal scenes were shot at Lipot, an imposing and eerie hospital
building just outside Budapest.

Kris Thykier comments, "The Debt has an incredible cast acting out a story with
an emotional complexity that will keep audiences on the edge of their seats as
the characters' fates unwind."

John Madden concludes, "This is a thriller that keeps tightening the knot, with a
sense that panic is just barely being held at bay.

"The film's title has multiple layers: historical, political and personal. The Debt
asks questions that we face daily; 'What would I have done in this situation?'
'How would I have behaved in those circumstances?' 'What is the price I would --
or will -- pay?'"

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